WhatsApp Marketing – A Guide to Conversational Commerce

Conversational commerce is the use of chats, messaging, and other conversational interfaces (such as voice) for marketing and sales purposes. 

The term was coined in 2016 by Chris Messina, who noted that in the first quarter of 2015 messaging apps had eclipsed social social networks in monthly active users. Was he right or wrong in predicting the rise of conversational commerce?

Well yes and no, here is the classic graphic of Google Trends with the interest of the term, both in English and in Spanish:

WhatsApp is one of the most used and downloaded applications in the world. Without even collecting data, let’s do a simple litmus test with parents and friends: how many family and friends of yours do not use WhatsApp?

Maybe you have some, but they’re in  a minority. Ask yourself the same question for Facebook, TikTok or Twitter. I’m guessing the answer was the same.Ok, maybe if you are in the United States it’s different, but that’s an anomaly, believe me

 This quick “friends and family” poll gives us a rough idea  of the omnipresence of WhatsApp (at least in Europe and Latin America). It is probably the most transversal communication tool that we have: it is used by young people and the elderly, by people of poor digital skills and by totally digitized guys.

In 2020, when we analyzed the Status of WhatsApp Marketing, (here is the 2022 update) the figures were already impressive , and since then, it has continued to grow.

Let’s look at some figures:

I think we can agree that WhatsApp is an application that everyone uses. But it’s one of the least used by businesses.

Let’s look at how businesses might use WhatsApp. There are four ways to use WhatsApp as a business.I’ll list them from low to high “complexity”:

1. As a “normal user”. That is, you have your business and you use your WhatsApp (perhaps with the company number, perhaps with your personal number). This is very common way to use WhatsApp, especially in the early stages.
2. You use the WhatsApp Business app.That is, the official WhatsApp application for small businesses and businesses. 
3. You use a specialized tool that gives you access to more functionalities. WhatsApp Business is great, but it can fall short very quickly. Do you need several people using it? Oops, you only have one user, it’s not multi-agent. Do you need to integrate it with a CRM? Sayonara. Do you need to program a simple chatbot? No. WhatsApp Business is perfect for businesses with only one location (or very few) and with a low or medium volume of messages, but when we need to “spread” the use of the account, it will not be enough. This is where specialized tools come in. There are many, and I have organized some of them in this directory of professional tools for WhatsApp (it is in Spanish, you will be able to check good tools, most of them in English).
4. You directly use the WhatsApp Business API. And this is the “top” option. Perfect for large companies, it allows us to tailor what we need.

WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp Business API – what are the differences and which one should you use?

Use WhatsApp Business if you have little volume and are starting out (if you have already started with your “normal WhatsApp”, that’s ok too) As you grow and need more functionality, You may need the WhatsApp Business API.

• WhatsApp CRM: these tools  seek to recreate the experience of a CRM in WhatsApp (organization of conversations by status in the sales funnel, commercial tools and that kind of thing) or that facilitate integration with CRM from third parties (Zoho, Pipedrive, or whatever).
• Multi-agent WhatsApp or multi-user WhatsApp. One of the great limitations of WhatsApp Business is that we cannot have more than one person answering. Many solutions solve just that, the possibility of having several people managing conversations, usually with different roles (assigning conversations, responding). Totally necessary for slightly larger teams.
• Bots on WhatsApp. Creating a chatbot for WhatsApp is one of the things most demanded by many users. The definition of chatbot varies, but basically it is software that with the use of artificial intelligence or rules (or a combination of both) interacts with people through conversational interfaces (usually chat, sometimes voice).
• Live Chat on the web with WhatsApp. One of the most demanded solutions, because it applies to almost all types of users to include a chat solution on the web. In fact, in AppCritic we use one in the directory. There are many “life-long” solutions, but using WhatsApp would make everything easier. And it is just what these types of tools allow.
• WhatsApp for eCommerce. An interesting category that we will see grow as more businesses begin to have stores and businesses on WhatsApp and for payments to arrive globally.
• Integration with email. Email will continue to be one of the key points of contact. But not the only one. Being able to do things like send reminders on WhatsApp does not mean that it does not make sense to continue sending emails. Combining both can be the key to success.
• Customer service with WhatsApp. This is something transversal and increasingly common: why make the customer dizzy with calls when we can attend them on WhatsApp?